End of Year Fun and a New Duet!

We all got together for a performance class last week to run through our recital pieces. For the recital everyone is playing a solo and some students are doing duets. Each student will also perform their own composition from our 2015 student collection, Places I've Been. Here's a sneak peek of the cover:

Countdown and Congratulations

Well the countdown is officially on: only 13 days until my big exam! This month has been spent performing my program out for various audiences on different instruments, and tonight marks my fourth and final "preparation" concert. I'll have some good solid time after tonight to rest up my arms and go over the finer details of my pieces before the big day. I also hope to get them recorded, as I doubt I'll ever have this much repertoire ready ever again!

My Crazy Project

So about a year ago I began memorizing some music. Beethoven, in fact (click here to see the post). My goal was to put together a program in preparation for the Canadian National Conservatory of Music's Licentiate in Piano Performance exam. Well, this crazy project of mine is well under way now and I'm planning on doing my exam this May. Yay!!

So why is it crazy, you ask?

Summer Memorizing Project (+ a big reveal!)

Happy Canada Day! It is a beautiful sunny day here-- 26°C with a light breeze-- and I just finished memorizing movement 1 of my Bach Partita. The Partita No. 5 in G major is part of a set of six harpsichord suites that were composed by J.S. Bach between the years 1725-1730 (or so). Each suite contains a number of short dance movements such as an Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Gigue. I have given myself the task of memorizing the seven movements of this Partita by the time I leave for Summer Sizzle in mid August. BUT WHY??

June Memorizing Project: building the repertoire!

So I wasn't sure I would finish memorizing the Chopin in May-- it was such a busy month and went by so quickly. Miraculously I pulled it off and am ready to start on my next project: memorizing the third movement of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata (see my post on memorizing the first movement here). 

Two Projects

First, the studio has undergone a bit of a renovation in the past couple months. For about a year and a half I used two white IKEA shelving units to house all my music books and teaching materials. These worked ok but didn't look the greatest and took up a lot of space. So we decided to move them upstairs and use them as toy storage and voila! my hubby got a new construction project.